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Scott Lundgren
Asked: 2010-11-20 08:43:41 +0800 CST

Why do I not have syntax highlighting when I sudo vi <filename>?

  • 772

I don't understand how to allow syntax highlighting in files I'm editing via vi when using sudo. When I sudo vi <filename> the terminal is only black & white of my terminal settings. In vi if I enter :syntax on nothing changes.

When I vi <filename> all the syntax is properly colored. Using RHEL 5.4, relevant env:

LS_COLORS=no=00:fi=00:di=01;34:ln=01;36:pi=40;33:so=01;35:bd=40;
33;01:cd=40;33;01:or=01;05;37;41:mi=01;05;37;41:ex=01;32:*.cmd=01;
32:*.exe=01;32:*.com=01;32:*.btm=01;32:*.bat=01;32:*.sh=01;32:*.csh=01;
32:*.tar=01;31:*.tgz=01;31:*.arj=01;31:*.taz=01;31:*.lzh=01;31:*.zip=01;
31:*.z=01;31:*.Z=01;31:*.gz=01;31:*.bz2=01;31:*.bz=01;31:*.tz=01;31:*.rpm=01;
31:*.cpio=01;31:*.jpg=01;35:*.gif=01;35:*.bmp=01;35:*.xbm=01;35:*.xpm=01;
35:*.png=01;35:*.tif=01;35:

SHELL=/bin/bash

TERM=xterm-color
linux sudo vi

7 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Larks answer is probably the most likely. You may not wish to change your root accounts vi to vim permanently as if your resources are low vi is almost guaranteed to always work, I'm not so sure about vim.

    You are probably using (color)

    /usr/bin/vim

    under your normal user and 

    /bin/vi

    under sudo or root. You can check by using:

    which vi

    once under your normal user and the other via sudo

    sudo which vi

    Do a

    man which

    if you need more details

    • 31

  2. On a RHEL system, /bin/vi is typically a minimal version of vim, without any syntax highlighting support. /usr/bin/vim is the full-featured editor. It is very likely that in your user environment, vi is an alias for vim. Try this:

    sudo vim /some/file

    Do you get syntax highlighting now?

    • 18

  3. Your vi is probably /bin/vi from package vim-minimal which does not support syntax highlighting. sudo vi launches /bin/vi for you.

    Bash only does alias expansion on the first word in your command line, so in:

    sudo vi

    vi is not substituted to vim even if you have that alias defined.

    The solution is define another alias (for the user invoking sudo):

    alias sudo='sudo '

    Note the space after the second sudo.

    Using this sudo, bash will do alias expansion for vi in sudo vi. In the alias section of Bash doc it says:

    If the last character of the alias value is a blank, then the next command word following the alias is also checked for alias expansion.

    After you enter your command, You can press Ctrl+Alt+E in bash to see the expansion result.

    Credits:

    https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=36796

    http://www.shellperson.net/using-sudo-with-an-alias

    Simply aliasing vi in /root/.bashrc will not work.

    It may also be noted that vi is not aliased for root on some distros in /etc/profile.d/vim.sh:

    if [ -n "$BASH_VERSION" -o -n "$KSH_VERSION" -o -n "$ZSH_VERSION" ]; then
  [ -x /usr/bin/id ] || return
  ID=`/usr/bin/id -u`
  [ -n "$ID" -a "$ID" -le 200 ] && return
  # for bash and zsh, only if no alias is already set
  alias vi >/dev/null 2>&1 || alias vi=vim
fi

    Changing this will not solve the problem either.

    • 14

  4. By default in 5.4 vi is default. I forget what version that started in. This will add the necessary alias for you:

    cat <<_EOF >>/root/.bashrc

alias "vi"="/usr/bin/vim"
_EOF
    • 3

  5. i found that in my version of vim (install with sudo apt-get install vim on debian 7) the syntax on command is defined on a per-user basis in ~/.vimrc. however by default the install did not create a /root/.vimrc file for sudo vito load. so i just copied ~/.vimrc into the /root/ dir and this did the trick: sudo cp ~/.vimrc /root/

    • 2

  6. 1) Check if you're really using vim and not vi (which unfortunately is default often on fresh installed systems)

    2) Check that your /etc/vim/vimrc has the line syntax on

    3) Not all kinds of files have syntax-highlighting info available by default....

    • 0

  7. For those still looking for help, try these commands.

    • sudovi = which sudo vi
    • usrvi = which vi
    • If these two locations are the same, then don't continue.

    Otherwise...

    • mv $sudovi $sudovi.save
    • ln -s $usrvi $sudovi (symbolic link)
    • -1